The Snaz

“…and I dig all you cats out there whippin’ and whalin’ and jumpin’ up and down and suckin’ up that fine juice, and pattin’ each other on the back and tellin’ each other who the greatest cat in the woild is. Mr. Malenkoff, Mr. Dalenkoff, Mr. Eisenhower, Woozinweezin, Weisenwoozer, and Mr. Woodhill and Mr. Beechhill and Mr. Churchhill and all them Hills, they gonna get it straight. If they can’t straighten it they know a cat that knows a cat that’s gonna get it straight. Well, I’m gonna put a cat on you was the sweetest, gonist, wailinest cat that ever stomped on this sweet swingin’ sphere. And they call this here cat…the Nazz, that was the cat’s name. He was a carpenter kitty. Now the Nazz was the kind of a cat that come on so wild, and so sweet, and so strong and so with it, that when he laid it -WHAM – it stayed there…”

The great hipster comedian Lord Richard Buckley on the Nazz, the man from Nazareth, known among the less hip as Jesus Christ

And on August 4, 1964 Mort Hempel and Yvon Chouinard, two of the sweetest, gonist, wailinest climber cats that ever had faith that a hundred or so feet of rope tied into a tiny Swami belt would save them from the inevitable fall went into Death Canyon in the wilderness of Wyoming’s Teton Range. And there they saw Cathedral Rock rising up above into the heavens and a line up that rock so straight and fine it caused them to commence whippin’ and wailin’ and jumpin’ up and down and suckin’ up that fine juice, and pattin’ each other on the back. With the faith that ends fear they straight away stomped up that nine pitch 5.9 Grade IV sweet swingin’ route that was so wild, so sweet, so strong, so with it that when they laid it after a few hours of tapping bongs and pitons into the Cathedral to protect them from their sins—WHAM—it stayed there as a classic and one of the most popular climbs in the Tetons.

Though they thought it was a snazzy route, they named it for the Nazz and called it The Snaz.